Dominate your culture change dojo

When hipster doofus Cosmo Kramer listened to his Katra he rose to class champion - he dominated the dojo. Now Kramer's opponents, it turned out, were small children but this serves to illustrate both the disproportionate advantage you will have with just a few culture change karate skills and importantly not to take the game too seriously. I normally play them in parallel to my day job and after a while it becomes natural.

Here are some exercises you can try, starting with my favourite:

Start with yourself

The most important skill you can develop - believe in yourself for sure but believe in something higher too; as the L'Oreal ad says, you're worth it, but what is missing is that worthiness is relative to your cause since it is that which powers your motivation and dominates the outcome. Find purpose, self-esteem on its own leads precisely nowhere. Mel Conway:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/conways-law-updated-christopher-patten/

To become a leader define what leadership means to you. Have a go because it is a skill we can all learn at some level and like any skill we get better with practice. And if working conditions don't allow, change them. cf. the quote attributed to William Gibson:

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes

Conway again, only this time you are on the receiving-end. Gandhi has a great quote about leaving this framing narrative behind:

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

Let people know your creed, what you stand for, and you will attract like minds. As Simon Sinek says, it's about the why. The biggest break-through in my own leadership journey was realising it wasn't about me. Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. My own oxygen mask was rediscovering faith (but not necessarily a faith tradition).

The following article by Norman Murray articulates some of my journey: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/5-top-tips-build-your-resilience-norman-murray/

Build an influence network

I spend a great deal of time listening and talking to people in that order. As well as being an enjoyable part of my job I am motivated with each interaction to find out more about the other person (including the reductionistic what makes them tick, what they know and who they know, and importantly what and who they don't know - and powerfully what and who they don't know they don't know, particularly about themselves cf. Johari Window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window) and to let them find out about me. But it doesn't stop there, I help them, trading knowledge and information - and contacts, providing introductions (be a good host and facilitator - my worst bosses have not introduced me personally to a single person - do I have Stockholm Syndrome?). And I speak to all walks of people - and observe there is often a disconnect between the problems on the ground and those perceived at senior levels. As the relationships progress I find I can often influence my network's behaviour and find my own being influenced too. After a while this extends out into my wider professional sphere and becomes a quasi organisation.

Advanced skill: influence networking is not just for people, it works for epistemology and ontology too. Indeed Jeff Bezos' flywheel principle is a great example of an influence network with a feedback loop powering growth (a meta influence network).

Key tips:

1. Life is a duality, get used to it. You are in this multiplex of influence networking whether you like it or not. And it extends beyond the human condition, who's to say nature and indeed physics doesn't play by these principles too
2. As a result, people and things may not be what they seem. Who knows what subtle influence network calibrations they are doing when they speak or act. It's their network after all. I have Donald Trump in this category - who knows what he is really doing? And what role in the network is played by the truffles the pigs dig up in the forests of Italy? I've no idea 
3. Self-knowledge, emotional intelligence and taming of ego are all important as they allow greater access to this duality. Significant exposure to paradoxes and contradictions helps - one of the mainstays of Eastern belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism. Watch The Matrix
4. Aim for transparency through being up front about your motivations and giving people something for nothing. In the knowledge economy, generosity is rewarded and costs you nothing (unless your castle is constructed on restricting rather than optimising flow - should only apply in a minority of cases. One should never restrict bringing people on - if they are a threat the problem is with you). Avoid impressing with erudition, instead give people something they can use right away. Having credibility here is essential
5. Monitor and police the network. E.g. flow of traffic over time: if you push intel one way and get command and control back then this is a hierarchy not an influence network and your relationship is where these networks meet. Different model, different network (and as a result for the Cloud and networking and security professionals among us know, a firewall and perimeter controls are required). Once you get into this you will see that individuals you interact with will be simultaneously in different positions in the different networks. And Network alignment and harmonisation once learnt becomes a calling, a life's work. Note: people typically communicate over all network colours simultaneously cf. body language - the topic for another article

Build a trust network

A bit harder this one but very rewarding. Over enough interactions (or very few depending on the person - mindshare at play) we start to understand each other at a deeper level and trust develops. Suddenly we have each other's backs and another powerful organisational structure is formed. And shove this on top of an influence network and we now have an affective mechanism for getting things done, including a tool for influencing upwards (we can also promote from our influence network into the trust network). Reputation and credibility and personal integrity are all critical - and if this network is damaged in any way, do your level best to repair it.

Play the modular synth

In this game I patch random bits of the network together to get people talking, which sometimes leads to pleasing electronic noises and less often to a blown circuit. Some of my favourite patches have been: the sound you get introducing rival Cloud vendors to each other, introducing the person indirectly saying "no" to a request to the original requestor. Randomly distributing intel around so people know what really is going on (refrain from gossip and respect confidentiality obligations). A certain degree of insubordination is sometimes necessary when patching upwards, and is often but not always rewarded. Play the odds and have the courage to take calculated risks, then step back and observe the effects before acting again. Otto von Bismarck:

"A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment."

To demonstrate how deep this recursion goes, this is the game I am playing now by writing and sharing.

Tip: this is related to Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power, Law 39: Stir up waters to catch fish and 45: Preach the need to change, but never reform too much at once (e.g. too much of this will trigger a counter-attack from the network re-establishing the order orthodoxy, although if I am strong enough I keep going and can trigger a collapse). Indeed a future article will show how all these rules are actually heuristics approximating the rules of influence networking across the Laloux colours (different networks have different rules).

I kind of do this modular synth stuff naturally, but my background in AI must have been an influence. Here's an article that explains why this works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

It reminds me of John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin recommending absorbing all musical forms, and a book I read on mastering ball skills that recommended playing them all. Pope Francis used this technique when he intervened in a row over communion being denied to a divorcee, the person I watched on Youtube giving a chocolate bar to a poor cocoa bean farmer who previously didn't know what he was growing it for, the inspirational works of Greta Thunberg - it disrupts the assumed pecking order allowing the network to learn and adapt and that is good. The other thing I love about this game is it is a great empowerment tool. It's like I have this secret second life where I get to be my own boss with my own agenda.

I also play this game with books and knowledge people might find useful. Mentoring, teaching people to abandon Togaf and adopt Zachman (tip: I use IAF), teaching communications skills, introducing culture hacking and cybernetic metaphors (in other words contributing to the open source model of the human operating system us spectrum geeks can use and sharing the git location) being some of my stock in trade. I can now predict with high accuracy who has read 48 Laws of Power and who hasn't and enjoy recommending this life-changing read.

Be the sensei

In this exercise I determine what I view as my best set of skills (in my case technical, political and psychological) and imagine my environment as the dojo. The people I interact with are pupils but they do not know this yet or accept my position which is often in radical misalignment to orthodoxy and established hierarchy (a treat I allow myself sometimes is to demolish these in front of them to make a point - show don't tell). I then watch the pupils interacting with myself and each other and gauge a rough idea of their grades - rather like the karate belt system. Then the fun begins. Here are some examples - and like most martial arts best practiced in a group setting:

• Blood the upstart - someone starts chopping at people and employing sloppy roundhouse kicks, with some success against the weaker belts. I come in and use the tip of my elbow and their own momentum to swiftly land the miscreant on their back with a metaphorical bloody ear. People look at them lying on the mat then seem more receptive to my position in the dojo. Note, sometimes a private word is required as well. See: https://www.thekairosproject.com/toxic-behaviour-antidotes/ for why this is necessary
• Step back - I am no bully, nor am I an egotist - I'm just trying to help people and technology work better together. So after flexing a few exhibition moves I withdraw to the side and watch what happens next. The belts re-calibrate like a wolf pack and with the upstart temporarily disabled the signal-to-noise ratio and energy levels shoot up
• Encourage participation and potential - ahh, the quiet ones, what lies behind their timid countenance? Quite a lot in my experience - and often easily shut down. Another bug in the belt calibration. I encourage them non-verbally (and through individual mentoring sessions where necessary). Then I will gauge when they want to contribute and step in and facilitate it if required

Top tip: stories and analogies and humour are all helpful in making this valuable and fun for everyone rather than some Machiavellian power game.

Well there you have it: my five "go to" culture change dojo techniques. While on one level there is a degree of manipulation going on, it's necessary as I attempt to rewire my network (and myself and my knowledge base) to reflect the natural ordering of authority and expertise according to my goals, and their behaviour, attitude and merit rather than their rhetorical skills, pay grades, reporting relationships and hormones. Repeat a few trillion times and a new world order emerges. Or perhaps it was already there.

Footnote 1: read a book on karate, grade: white belt. Read 20 books: white belt with a lot of unhelpful framing narratives to unlearn

Footnote 2: theory and practice: even in theory it is better to practice

Footnote 3: great article by Antlerboy on paradigm shifts that these techniques represent: https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/04/07/paradigm-shift-rationalwiki/

Footnote 4: introducing the iceberg model showing why this grassroots empowerment really works for organisations: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/what-happens-when-luxury-cruise-ship-apathy-arrogance-mark-furman-1/

Footnote 5: screw that, just read: